How to Murder Your Wife (1965)
Stanley Ford leads an idyllic bachelor life. He is a nationally syndicated cartoonist whose Bash Brannigan series provides him with a luxury townhouse and a full-time valet, Charles. When he wakes up the morning after the night before - he had attended a friend's stag party - he finds that he is married to the very beautiful woman who popped out of the cake - and who doesn't speak a word of English. Despite his initial protestations, he comes to like married life and even changes his cartoon character from a super spy to a somewhat harried husband.
Watch Trailer
Cast
Reviews
Jack Lemmon was surely right about the court room scene, certainly the culmination. It is altogether too raucous and even by the standards of this film unrealistic. Surely it would have been better if the murder "victim" had turned up in the public area and starting chanting "Bravo!" as the suspect started defending himself.Otherwise an excellent comedy of manners with excellent performances. My favourite? Difficult to say but probably Lemmon's lawyer!Terry-Thomas' performance probably inspired Denholm Elliott's English manservant in "Trading Places". Terry-Thomas is more enjoyable but Elliott is probably the better actor.
Oh Dear, go at the end of the reviews and you will see the feminist reviews blaming this movie for all the women's suffering of the world, or even being gay, or simply illogical in some aspects. Now if like me you are a relatively happy married fellow with some basic desire to be respected in our masculinity, if you see no gay tendency for having a butler or for going to a male only gym and massage session (like many Asian gentlemen still indulge in), and if you see with both happiness and inquietude your tummy increasing from eating your wife's delicious food (yes, it still happens that women can cook and care), then you will enjoy it! I really enjoy the idea of a gentleman club, with healthy gym and a bit of a drinks later. It would be such a relief from our daily concerns, it would allow some socializing and contrary to what some ill-intended feminists may think, a no-lady-accepted club is the guarantee to wives that their husband does not get miscarried by extra-marital adventures. Allowing men to go there, only once a week, would be beneficial to everyone. Of course it will not happen: men have to baby-sit, cook, work hard, help to the house-core, and are only sometimes allow to watch a stupid game on TV while eating a popcorn bag and drinking a cheap beer. The movie depicts the time of good old fellows, talking civilized English, drinking a chilled martini, and singing good men songs while drunk instead of vomiting obscenities out of a bar. Let us go back to this good old time, which was not good for everyone... but let us enjoy it, just once, and laugh about it!
This film strives desperately to be funny and only occasionally succeeds. Oddly, Jack Lemmon mostly functions as a straight man in those moments. The comedy is supplied by one of the other actors: Terry-Thomas as his valet, Eddie Mayehoff as his incompetent, hen-pecked lawyer, Clair Trevor as the lawyer's wife, Virna Lisi as his own wife or Sidney Blackstone as a frequently drunk judge proclaiming that he is "as sober as a judge." The premise -- that Lemmon's character is a dedicated bachelor who accidentally marries the woman (Lisi) that rose out of a cake at a drunken, guys-only party -- might be funny but it usually isn't. Ms. Lisi, an Italian beauty who made a couple of Hollywood films, is asked to be beautiful, speak Italian in rapid outbursts and to perform a sexy dancing routine at one point in the story. She does those three things efficiently. Lemmon's role is absurd to begin with, and it doesn't get a lot better as the film progresses. It doesn't much matter that the story is ridiculous. Many successful comedies are ridiculous. Rather, the film often fails because the effort to provoke laughter is simply too strenuous.
OK, maybe not; but on the surface the messages of both are surprisingly similar: The 'other side' are demons and it's OK to kill 'em.Unlike 'Thelma' though, this movie is played entirely for laughs and in my view succeeds very well. All the leads (Terry-Thomas in particular) are great, and Virna Lisi is spot on – as well as being absolutely stunning. I also agree with everyone else about Neal Hefti's score: it sounds remarkably like the theme to the Odd Couple, and you'll find yourself humming it days later.Yes, the women are cardboard cut-outs and the courtroom scene is over the top (I think they could have played it almost the same and simply acquitted him of having the *idea* of killing his wife), but this was a generation before T&L, and society was very different then.Funny thing is, they could never make a movie like this now; but they certainly could (and probably will) remake 'Thelma'.